27 poems in a slim text from 1979, deeply imbued with Irish references, and many dedicated to the memory of an Irish national. Certainly worth reading and Heaney at times pierces with his imagery or a turn of phrase, but for some reason this collection didn’t resonate completely with me.

My favorite was Part X of the Glanmore Sonnets:“I dreamt we slept in a moss in DonegalOn turf banks under blankets, with our facesExposed all night in a wetting drizzle,Pallid as the dripping sapling birches.Lorenzo and Jessica in a cold climate.Diarmuid and Grainne waiting to be found.Darkly asperged and censed, we were laid outLike breathing effigies on a raised ground.And in that dream I dreamt – how like you this? –Our first night years ago in that hotelWhen you came with your deliberate kissTo raise us towards the lovely and painfulCovenants of flesh; our separateness;The respite in our dewy dreaming faces.” ( )

"I used to lie with an ear to the lineFor that way, they said, there should come a soundEscaping ahead, an iron tuneOf flange and piston pitched along the ground,But I never heard that." (Glanmore Sonnets IV)Seamus Heaney is fantastic.